Aug 3 What's in a Name? For Newsela, it's a Science

“Is it News-E-L-A or News-ella? Newzeala? NEW-zella?”
We get a lot of teachers asking us how to say the name of our company. (For those of you who don’t already know, it’s News-ELL-uh.) One reason why we’re not News-E-L-A is that we’re not just for ELA teachers. In fact, over 60 percent of Newsela educators teach subjects other than ELA.

We seek to serve teachers of all disciplines. To that end, we added Scientific American as a content partner last fall. The response to our Science section speaks for itself:

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Of the 10 most popular stories of the year, four of them are from our Science section. With nearly 500 science stories on our site, teachers might not be sure where to start. To help with that, we've pulled our top three most popular science stories from the past year:

Next was this story on polar bears and their “natural” behavior. The story described how it was difficult for scientists to observe polar bears in zoos and in the wild because environmental changes had dramatically changed how they act.

Pumpkins from another planet? No, Wisconsin.

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The most popular science story among students and teachers is a fall-themed one on how Wisconsin residents are growing some of the world’s largest pumpkins.
All three of these stories cover different STEM concepts from using statistics to do a predictive analysis, to climate change and its effects, to plant genetics. Are you a science teacher using Newsela with your class? If so, let us know how you incorporate it into your lesson plans by tweeting @Newsela.

Bringing the written word to life is our jam. So we created the Newsela Instructional Content Platform. It's the only platform purpose-built to get students not just reading but truly engaged with every word. Students and teachers rejoice.

Bringing the written word to life is our jam. So we created the Newsela Instructional Content Platform. It's the only platform purpose-built to get students not just reading but truly engaged with every word. Students and teachers rejoice.